Conflicting Interests Policy

The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) states in its Guidelines on Good Publication Practice (2003) that:

Conflicts of interest arise when authors, reviewers, or editors have interests that are not fully apparent and that may influence their judgments on what is published. They have been described as those which, when revealed later, would make a reasonable reader feel misled or deceived.

Potential conflicts of interest exist when an author, editor or reviewer has financial, personal or professional interests in a publication that might influence their scientific judgment.

2. Obligations regarding conflicting interests

Voprosy onomastiki (Problems of onomastics) does not require a formal declaration of conflicting interests. However, it is implied that by submitting a paper the author states that:

all forms of financial support are acknowledged in their contribution;

there are no commercial, financial, personal, professional involvements that might present an appearance of a conflict of interest related to the submitted article.

Otherwise, the author should make an explicit declaration of conflicting interests in the text of the letter accompanying the contribution. Also, if there is a conflict of interests, upon submission of a manuscript, authors may also suggest to exclude any specific editors or reviewers from the peer review of their article.

The same obligations equally apply to editors or reviewers that will handle the paper: they should declare whether they have any conflicts of interests that may influence the editorial judgment.

Articles will be evaluated fairly and will not necessarily be rejected when any conflicting interests are declared.

You may find the following useful resources to refer to for more information on Conflict of Interest policies, existing codes of practices and more general good practice in relation to journal publication ethics: